February 10, 2009

For Valentine’s Day, Just the Two of Us

My wife and I met on a blind date 34 years ago. We had lunch. We strolled around Ann Arbor, swapping biographical semi-facts and philosophical insights. I played my guitar and sang John Denver songs to her, while she convincingly pretended to enjoy them.

By the end of that date we were spouting love sonnets and declaring our mutual devotion to the heavens. We were Romeo and Juliet, only without all the poisoning and stabbing.

Our second date just happened to be on Valentine ’s Day.

Just a little over six months after we met, we got married. We were terrific newlyweds. We didn’t have much money, but we discovered that you could still have quite a bit of fun if you stuck to the cheap draft beer and the house wine.

I worked on polishing up those John Denver songs and learned some Paul Simon. She managed to remain fairly cheerful through it all, and took up macramé. Then along came Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight, and nine months later our son was born.

The whole romance thing changes quite a bit once you have a child. Those nights we used to spend listening to some local band screaming out its interpretation of Sweet Home Chicago, gazing at each other over glasses of cheap draft beer and house wine, turned into afternoons spent gazing at the kid over plastic cups of diet coke and enduring the sound of the five thousand or so video games in the Chuck E. Cheese, as they waged a kind of ear-shattering sonic warfare with a Muzak version of Shake My Sillies Out.

We spent the next 18 years working our way pretty much full-time through a parade of diapers, sippy cups, chicken pox, swimming lessons, bicycles, hockey tournaments, little league, viola lessons, braces, girl friends, strange haircuts, guitar lessons, snow boards, jet skis, driving lessons, cars and, ultimately, colleges.

And now he’s moved away and it’s just the two of us again. These days, what we really enjoy doing on long winter evenings involves sitting in our comfy chairs side-by-side in the living room and watching Family Guy reruns. Whoever manages to stay awake until 11 p.m. when The Daily Show comes on gets to pick out what flavor of juice we buy the next time we go to Costco.

Romeo and Juliet have become Uncle Henry and Auntie Em.

Not only have we gotten all grainy and sepia-toned, we have become totally predictable. Each of us almost always knows what the other is going to say next. Luckily, we both also know that finishing the other person’s sentence would be grounds for divorce. After more than 30 years she knows enough not to talk to me in the morning until I start to whistle, and I know that I’d better darned well do some whistling in the morning if I’m going to get any breakfast.

To a young person, full of passion and hormones, this may seem like a fate worse than losing cell service, but it’s really not so bad. There is an indescribably warm and wonderful comfort in our relationship. She knows that she will always have me to explain (again) how to operate the DVD player, and I will always have someone who will put up with being called “Toots.”

So this Valentine’s Day my wife and I will probably do something romantic, like getting the vacuum cleaner repaired. We’ll also try to get some other stuff done that we’ve been meaning to get around to, and we’ll feel pretty good about it. Then maybe we’ll go out and split an order of Shanghai Noodles.

But at some point we’ll also line up some cheap draft beer and house wine, and we’ll take the time to do a little bit of gazing – just for old times’ sake.

Copyright ©2009 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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